A weather front moved through the area last night. It is a bit cooler today and much less humid, so riding is much more pleasant.
As I was riding along a little 1-lane country road near Ethridge TN today, I passed an Amish buggy coming the other way. The family in the buggy, dressed in traditional Amish clothes, looked at me in surprise as I looked at them in surprise. Later, when I came to a main road, I noticed a store with the word "Amish" in the name. I hadn't realized they had settled in this area.
At one of my Coke stops, in the town of Waco, I got talking with a local
cyclist on a training ride. He explained that all the roof construction
taking place on several nearby houses was due to the recent tornadoes.
That pile of rubble across the street used to be a store. I've been very
lucky with weather -- only two days of rain so far.
The cyclist also flagged down a friend working on one of the houses who loaned me a wrench and 12 mm socket so I could adjust my loose pedal bearings. The pedal was fine after that for a couple hours, then I noticed it was loose again. I'll replace the pedals when I find a bike shop to have my wheel rebuilt. It's interesting that the parts of my 26-year-old bike that have been failing are the new parts. The pedals and crankset were borrowed off my mountain bike which has seen only a couple hundred miles of use.
When I turned on route 129 to go from Lynnville to Cornersville, I saw
a sign that said the road was closed 6 miles ahead. I decided to chance
it. Sure enough, the pavement was missing for about 50 feet, blocked at
each end by an earth mover, but no problem getting through on a bike.